6th September 2018 | ifa_admin

Greener fuel is coming, with the government planning on rolling out the more environmentally friendly E10 eco-fuel in larger filling stations across the country in 2020 to help meet the country’s emission targets. E10, which is already on sale across France and Germany but not yet in the UK, contains 10% renewable bioethonal, in contrast to the average 5% of regular unleaded. But are our cars compatible?

It would seem not. Research has suggested that in 2020 there will be more than half a million cars which are incompatible with E10, including popular family models such as Ford, Nissan and Volkswagen. In fact, the Volkswagen golf is predicted to be the most common of these cars, with almost 30,000 likely to be on the roads in two years’ time.

So what will this mean for an incompatible car? The director of the RAC Foundation, Steve Gooding, admitted there will be a problem in 2020:

“This analysis shows that even in a couple of years’ time there will still be hundreds of thousands of cars on our roads that are incompatible with the new fuel. Whilst some of the cars are incompatible with E10 fuel will be historic models, many will be old but serviceable everyday run-arounds that people on a tight travel budget rely on to get about.”

However, he then went on to reassure car owners:

“The good news is both that the vast majority of cars on our roads are able to run on E10 and that Transport Secretary Chris Grayling has recognised the need to protect the users of those older vehicles which are not E10 compatible.”